As used in the present invention description, the term insert refers to those advertising or informational newspaper inserts which are added to a daily or Sunday newspaper.
As is known in the industry, such inserts are commonly preprinted in a separate printing run days or weeks ahead of the normal daily newspaper. Since the daily newspaper itself leaves the printing presses in a folded condition, it then becomes necessary to place the advertising inserts inside the folded newspapers.
Such melding of the advertising insert with the folded newspaper must be accomplished rapidly due to the exigencies of daily newspaper delivery.
Accordingly, specialized insert machines have been developed in the art to accomplish the above. Typically, in a mechanized operation, the advertising inserts are loaded into a hopper of an insert machine which automatically places the inserts into the appropriate position in the printed daily newspaper.
It has been known in the industry for a number of years to utilize sectioned carts to transport the advertising inserts to the hopper of an insert machine. For example, the use of carts having four different insert carrying sections have been used in the art, such carts in past years typically being made of wood.
Loading carts of this variety have become known as insert carts, and such are the subject of the present invention.
The four-sectioned structure of the wooden insert carts has been utilized to accomplish a more rapid loading of the advertising inserts into the hopper of an insert machine. Of course, such wooden carts had rolling casters mounted therebelow for transport of the advertising inserts from one place in the printing plant to the desired hopper location.
In more recent years, the insert carts have been fashioned of metal and ways have been developed to facilitate the more rapid loading and unloading of such insert carts.
An example of a prior art metal insert cart is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,025 to Waddell et al. As shown in FIG. 1 of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,025 to Waddell, metal insert carts of today's usage continue to utilize the four-sectioned structure known in the older prior art wooden insert cart designs.
The Waddell '025 structure also incorporated a rod 62 and pad 54 braking structure, shown in FIG. 2 of the patent, which operates as follows: an exterior handle 84 is moved from a horizontal position by the operator to the vertical position shown in FIG. 2. Such movement of the handle 84 serves to force rod 62 and attached lower pad 54 downward into a braking position whereby the loaded insert cart can be rotated about a fixed point on casters 16 so that a workman can easily unload the four sections of the cart and appropriately place the advertising inserts into the hopper of an insert machine.
It has been realized in the safety engineering arts that structures such as those of the Waddell patent may pose a serious cart operator safety hazard in practical use.
For example, the braking handle 84 of the Waddell system may be operated by one hand only of the cart using operator, leaving the other hand free to be potentially caught under the section shown as 88 in FIG. 2 of the '025 patent. Such potential for operator injury has been generally recognized by national safety engineering groups and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in promulgating standards which recommend that a manually actuated machine be designed such that both hands of a workman are required in the activation step to eliminate the possibility for crushing or severing injury to a free hand which may be placed in the work area.
Other potentially dangerous aspects of configurations such as that of Waddell have been noted by those of skill in the art. For example, in the brake-on position of Waddell, the relatively sharp handle 84 is in a vertical position which may cause injury to a workman falling or slipping in the area of the insert cart. Further, as the handle 84 is turned up or down by the workman, it passes through region 74 and tends to very rapidly accelerate or snap into the up or down position. Such rapid handle acceleration also poses a risk of injury to the using workman.
In an age of profuse product liability litigation, it is of course recognized that the elimination of safety hazards wherever possible is of tantamount importance in the arts. Such is especially true where, as here, the working tool is intended for use by unskilled or semi-skilled personnel.